SER ILHA (Being Island)
Recent paintings by Felipe Góes
The exhibition “Ser Ilha” (Being Island) by São Paulo-based Felipe Góes presents eight paintings created by the artist in recent years. Like fragments of an intimate archipelago, these works emerge from a broader constellation of the artist’s trajectory — landscapes that engage with what is not anchored in the visible world: the cosmos, the universe, the telluric layers of the imagination. The works chosen for this show, in some way, orbit the idea of the island — not only as a place, but as a state, condition, presence.
But, after all, what is an island?
If we stick to some of the meanings given by the dictionary[1], we can understand it geographically as a “portion of land not as large as a continent and surrounded by water on all sides,” or, by extension, as “something that resembles an island by being isolated or removed from the world around it.”
“Being Island,” in turn, which gives the exhibition its title, opens up various interpretive keys. From thinking of the human being who, being “like an island,” can be/feel reflective, in isolation, or reinforcing their values, principles, and identity, or even resisting in the face of a situation where everything around them pulses in other directions.
We can also think of the island as a place of refuge, a safe space, of protection, where we have almost a sanctuary to shelter ourselves.
But it is also possible to think of “Being Island” not as a metaphor for the human being and their needs, but as the island itself as a being in itself, endowed with presence and existence. This shift would lead us to other fields such as ecology, Indigenous cosmologies, and even the ontology that recognizes the power of objects and landscapes as forms of existence.
We invite visitors to wander through these meanings and navigate this exhibition by intertwining them, if they wish.
Here, we see works that, suggesting islands as “portions of land” or “entities in themselves,” can evoke different feelings: first, a sense of closeness as if we were visiting a familiar landscape that can be experienced; second, a sense of tension and mystery, which can both hypnotize and intrigue. From this place, we don’t know how to approach, or even if we should, because we have no idea what to expect.
In the first case, we see canvases of different formats suggesting warm places, full of trees, fluorescent lights, overflowing and uncertain contours that trigger thoughts, memories, smells, sounds. Everything pulses — they are fertile places. At certain moments, as in Painting 382, the human-scale dimension of the canvas places us inside the painting, as active participants and not as one who merely contemplates. What we feel is that we are in front of something with which we can interact.
Also on a human scale, but triggering opposite sensations, is Painting 423. With this more complex and enigmatic work, the first contact is inexplicable, and we do not dare to take part. It is not friendly, but it exerts the power to fascinate us. We feel a kind of affective ambivalence — what occurs on this island? Can I enter? Should I? Painting 423 is like the core of the most mysterious islands, so to speak.
More distant is the view offered by Painting 360. We cannot understand the configuration of the spaces the artist proposes through the various layers of paint that overlap. In this almost geological view, we perceive the layers of the earth itself — crust, mantle, core — mirrored in the materiality of the painting.
Felipe Góes’ islands do not exist in the real world. They are fabulations, constructed without a map or compass, born in the instant of the gesture. They are inventions that take shape as they are painted, as if the artist were creating drifting territories where we can lose ourselves — or find ourselves.
In the presence of these islands, we are cast upon a journey: sometimes we imagine, sometimes we recognize; sometimes we dream, sometimes we fear. Between isolation and embrace, between the real and the unreal, we inhabit for a moment the condition of “Being Island.”
Text by Renata Rocco
June 2025
Solo exhibition "Ser Ilha", held at Zipper Galeria, São Paulo, Brazil.
[1] Dicionário Michaelis. https://michaelis.uol.com.br/moderno-portugues/busca/portugues-brasileiro/ilha. Access: June 03, 2025.